Famous artists: Collage

This is the fourth and final article in our series about famous artists. This article looks at the work of famous artists who have used the medium of collage to create artworks that will inspire children and their practitioners to get cutting, sticking, mixing, matching, and making art together.

The definition of collage is ‘a piece of art made by sticking various different materials that are not normally associated with one another onto a single surface’. Collage lends itself to working with young children as they can use a rich variety of familiar materials to create new, imaginative, artistic creations.

Mary Delany – Paper Mosaics

Mosaic flowers

Mary Delany (1770 to 1788) was known for her intricate, botanically accurate, pictures of flowers and plants made by cutting minute pieces of coloured paper and sticking them down onto a black background. It is thought that the artist often dissected the plant first to make her pictures more accurate. Show the children some images of these extraordinary pictures. Provide them with some flowers or plants to observe, handle and examine in detail. Let them draw the shape of the flower or plant onto a piece of black paper using chalk (see worksheet 1). Then ask them to cut the different parts of the flower out of coloured paper and stick down onto the background.

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